Earth's potential next crisis: H2-uh-oh

April 24, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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UCI Professor Jay Famiglietti conducts research on water supplies around the world using satellite measurements. He has a worrisome message: water supplies are being depleted globally, as populations rise and humans consume fresh water at a faster rate than it can be replenished. He has appeared in a documentary called "Last Call at the Oasis." JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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UCI Professor Jay Famiglietti has a message: water supplies are being depleted globally, at a faster rate than it can be replenished. He has appeared in a documentary called "Last Call at the Oasis." JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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UCI Professor Jay Famiglietti has a message: water supplies are being depleted globally, at a faster rate than it can be replenished. He has appeared in a documentary called "Last Call at the Oasis." JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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By tracking satellite images over time, UCI Professor Jay Famiglietti has determined water supplies are being depleted globally as populations rise and humans consume fresh water at a faster rate than it can be replenished. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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UCI Professor Jay Famiglietti has shared his research with many middle eastern countries whose water resources are rapidly being depleted. JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

UCI Professor Jay Famiglietti conducts research on water supplies around the world using satellite measurements. He has a worrisome message: water supplies are being depleted globally, as populations rise and humans consume fresh water at a faster rate than it can be replenished. He has appeared in a documentary called "Last Call at the Oasis."JEBB HARRIS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Peering down on the Earth from space, through the "eyes" of satellites, Jay Famiglietti just might be able to tell you where the next war will break out.

The UC Irvine Earth system science professor is, of course, not in the business of forecasting armed conflict.

But he does measure the rate of water depletion around the globe. And he's noticed an unsettling pattern.

"In the last 50 years or so, no actual war has been fought over water," he said in a recent interview. "But if you look at where the conflicts occur, they are always in water-stressed regions."

And water wars could yet become a literal reality. Groundwater across the globe, including in large areas of the United States, is being drawn down rapidly as populations rise.

Combined with climate change, that will likely place much of the Earth's water supply in peril.

DELIVERING THE MESSAGE

Famiglietti, 52, can see the big picture. And he's traveled around the world, even appearing in a documentary, "Last Call at the Oasis," to try to sound the alarm.

"I have a message," he said. "The water cycle is changing in many places. We will be seeing more drought, more flooding; we'll be seeing water depletion – a lot of it."

The satellite measurements and computer modeling by Famiglietti's research group show that freshwater supplies over much of the planet are, in fact, being depleted faster than they can be replenished.

A flashpoint could be the Middle East, a region alight with flashpoints. A paper from the UC Center for Hydrologic Monitoring, the research group Famiglietti directs, drew widespread attention when it was published in February.

Using NASA's twin GRACE satellites, which measure changes in gravity on the surface as they pass over the planet, the researchers found that the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are losing their water reserves at an astonishingly rapid rate.

Between 2003 and 2010, the satellite measurements revealed, a region that includes Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq lost 117 million acre feet of water – nearly enough to fill the Dead Sea.

As in many places across the planet, California's Central Valley among them, drought can drive increased groundwater pumping.

The researchers said about 60 percent of the Middle East depletion was a result of groundwater pumping – and that the pace picked up after drought struck the region in 2007.

"This problem with groundwater depletion is a chicken-egg situation," Famiglietti said. "In a drought, people use more water. So there will be more drying. In just about every aquifer we look at, in arid and semi-arid (regions), they're being depleted at an unusual rate."

GOING GLOBAL

Famiglietti, a jokester around the lab, says he came to be the messenger of the coming global water crisis in a roundabout way.

Born and raised in Rhode Island to scientifically and mathematically-inclined parents – his father worked as a mechanical engineer, his mother as an accountant – Famiglietti spent a lot of time outdoors. The environmental message of the era began to sink in.

"I was already outside, seeing that all these places are dirty," he said.

When he started college at Tufts University in Massachusetts, however, he thought he was heading for veterinary school.

"I didn't like all that biological chemistry," he said.

He encountered geology almost by accident.

"It took me a year and a half to stumble into the class," he said. "I really loved it. I recognized it was a nice way to combine my interest in the outdoors with environmental science."

He met his wife, Cathy, while at Princeton, where, as a civil engineering graduate student, he began working with computer models to try to understand the planet's natural systems.

"It didn't take me too long to see the commonality between hydrology and global change," he said.

Now he divides his time between water research that often makes headlines and what he calls "water diplomacy" – traveling the world to meet with scientists, policymakers and other leaders to deliver his message about water depletion.

"We ask if they are interested in collaboration," Famiglietti said. "We're always looking for data exchange. A lot of it is really difficult to get."

He expected the difficulties he encountered in China, he said, where scientific freedom is very limited.

But in Tunisia, he found "a surprising lack of willingness to share data."

The problem was political. "There's a big aquifer that is shared by Libya and Tunisia," he said. "Tunisia doesn't want Libya to know how much water they're using."

SCIENCE TALK FOR POLITICIANS

Famiglietti and his team don't limit their encounters to other scientists.

"We draw the line a little further out than some scientists would," he said. "Some stuff we see as so important that we take the extra step, and bring it to the attention of politicians, policy makers, all around the world. But we don't advocate, and say, 'You should do this, you should do that.'"

He recently returned from a trip to Israel, the Palestinian Authority and Jordan, meeting with water authorities, nongovernmental organizations, and officials in U.S. embassies, among others.

Scientists in all three places were "very willing to work with us," he said, despite tensions over terrorism in the region.

In Jordan, he glimpsed what could be the grim future for many other parts of the world.

"Once you get outside of Amman, there's rock and dust," Famiglietti said. "People get water delivered once a week."

The contrast in water usage was stunning. People in the United States, he said, tend to use about 100 gallons of water per day.

In Jordan, he said, "they might use 10 gallons per day. We were blown away by the lack of water. We could not fathom how people lived the way we saw they were living."

Famiglietti's group is studying water-cycle changes on every continent except Antarctica. They are seeing significant groundwater depletion in northern China, Pakistan, India and the Himalayas, among other places.

And the United States is far from immune.

Modeling by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests the Earth's mid-latitudes could be especially vulnerable to drying by the end of the century.

"We're actually already seeing that in our data," Famiglietti said.

About half of the country, from the Great Plains to the Southeast and including California and Arizona, are seeing significant groundwater depletion.

Decreasing snow-pack and draw-down of groundwater in the Central Valley could cause sharp reductions in water-availability for Southern California.

"Suppose we don't have any water left in L.A. – enough to support agriculture?" he said. "We need to think through that."

Famiglietti, who lives in University Hills with his wife and daughter – his son is in college – says he tries to be "sustainable," riding his bike or walking to work and trying to limit family driving.

He says he wants to break through the public's blasé attitude about water depletion, in California and elsewhere.

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